Depression Triggers Outbreaks Of Herpes

July 11, 1990|By Washington Post Writers Group.

The painful and disturbing lesions of genital herpes come and go with little predictability. One pattern that patients and their doctors have noticed, however, is that stress, depression and other psychological upsets seem to trigger recurrences. Now research at the University of California, San Francisco, further supports the idea of a psychological role in herpes outbreaks and pinpoints a possible physiological mechanism by which depression could affect the disease.

For six months, psychologist Margaret E. Kemeny and her colleagues studied 36 men and women infected with the genital herpes virus. Through monthly interviews and questionnaires, the researchers tracked periods of stress, moods and health-related behavior, such as sleep, exercise and alcohol consumption. They also took blood samples from 19 people each month to test for the proportion of two types of immunological cells.

People who had the most stress in their lives didn`t suffer herpes outbreaks more frequently. What did make a difference was depression:

Chronically depressed individuals had twice as many recurrences of herpes outbreaks as those never or only periodically depressed.

The highly depressed also had a lower proportion of CD8 cells-immune cells that help regulate the body`s response to viruses. And people who had a lower average proportion of CD8 cells had more herpes outbreaks.

That chain of events, says Kemeny, suggests that chronic depression may create the immunological environment that weakens the body`s defense against a virus-a pathway by which a psychological state could affect the course of a disease.

Herpes-lesion outbreaks may also bring on depression in some sufferers, Kemeny adds, due to the physical discomfort or social embarrassment the disease causes. That may set off a painful cycle of depression, increased susceptibility to outbreaks and more depression.